Ray Winstone famously worked with George Lucas on the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but he had a prior encounter with the legendary Star Wars creator that didn’t exactly go according to plan. The British actor recently revealed that he once auditioned to play Padmé Amidala’s father Ruwee Naberrie in the popular space opera franchise, but he showed up drunk (and somewhat disorderly) to his meeting with Lucas and the casting team. He ultimately walked away from the audition room without securing the part – not that he ever expected to, as he admits that it felt “wrong” for him anyway.
“It didn’t go well,” Winstone told Far Out Magazine in a recent interview, as he recalled his audition to play the father of Natalie Portman’s character in the Star Wars franchise. “Had words and that was that. I’ve worked for George [Lucas] since, and he was fine. He didn’t remember. Or if he did, he didn’t take it to heart.”
If Lucas didn’t remember the inebriated audition, then it would be somewhat surprising, as it sounded like it was a memorable meeting between the two. “I’d been out all night, and I turned up, and I knew I was wrong for the part so soon as I walked in, but instead of saying that, he [Lucas] relayed the message to me through someone else, and I took umbrage at that,” Winstone remembered. He assumed that Lucas had “jet lag” because he yawned all the way through the audition and remained silent after the performance, prompting the actor to make a suggestion: “Why don’t we both have a 15-minute sleep, and then I’ll f**k off?”
Winstone made true on the last point and walked away from the audition without getting hired, which left the door open for Australian actor Graeme Blundell to take the role. Winstone has zero regrets about the way that the whole situation panned out, as he admits “that sort of film” would “bore the a**e” off of him, especially because of the amount of “bluescreen work” it requires. The actor has previously vocalized his preference for filmmaking in natural environments over CGI settings and publicly expressed his frustration over the creative freedom that is lost without the latter – not that it has stopped him from working on such projects.
Ray Winstone Called MCU Work “Soul-Destroying”
Winstone may not have ended up traversing the galaxy far, far away, but he has had a long and varied career spanning more than five decades. His extensive list of credits includes Nil By Mouth, Sexy Beast, and The Departed, as well as several franchise films, but he hasn’t had the best time on all the projects he has worked on. The actor signed on to play the villainous General Dreykov in the 2021 Marvel film Black Widow, but the whole process left him wanting to quit and inisist that his role be recast, as he found the studio’s extensive reshoots “soul-destroying.” He recalled the experience last year, likening it to being “kicked in the balls”:
“It was fine until you have to do the reshoots. Then you find out that a few producers have come down, and your performance is too much, it’s too strong… That’s the way Marvel works. It can be soul-destroying because you feel like you’re doing great work. I actually said, ‘You ought to recast it because that was it for me.’ And you end up doing it again because you’re contracted to do it. Otherwise, you end up in court. It’s like being kicked in the balls.”
It is safe to say that Winstone never returned to the MCU after that. Instead, he has shifted to taking on projects with Netflix, including the Millie Bobby Brown-starring fantasy adventure film Damsel and Guy Ritchie’s action-comedy series The Gentleman, which has been renewed for a second season, with Winstone reprising his role as underworld crime boss Bobby Glass. He is also co-producing and starring in a biopic about the tumultuous life and career of snooker player Jimmy White, so he isn’t short on roles, but you shouldn’t count on seeing him in Avengers: Doomsday, Secret Wars, or in Phase Six of the MCU (and beyond).
- Birthdate
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February 19, 1957
- Birthplace
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Hackney, London, England, UK